Milbank Manufacturing acquires a new product line

Milbank Manufacturing Co. announced Thursday that it acquired the Vigilant Automatic Transfer Switch product line from DynaGen Technologies Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

Kansas City-based Milbank is a manufacturer of electrical components, and is widely known for its electrical metering systems that are attached to most buildings. The company has been in the midst of a diversification effort that has it investing in systems that can monitor the electrical grid for a building and switch between the main power line, solar, wind, battery backup and generator systems to find the most cost effective power source combinations that meet the usage needs.

Vigilant's automatic transfer switches have a similar purpose. The switches are designed to automatically transfer critical electrical loads from the main power grid to backup generators in the event of a power outage. The switches are designed for residential, agricultural and light industrial applications.

Chris Buelow, general manager of Milbank's PowerGen division, said Milbank is on track to start manufacturing the switches at its plant in Concordia, Mo., within the next two weeks. He doesn't expect the new operation to lead to any additional hiring at this time.

Buelow said Milbank is very familiar with the product line, because they've already been selling it with their line of home stand-by generators.

"We think we can put our lean manufacturing principles into this and offer it through our distribution channel, which really hasn't had access to it before," Buelow said. "We felt with our own line of home standby generators and automatic transfer switches, that this fits in pretty well with those products and the customers who are already buying our products."

Buelow said Milbank is getting ready to ship out marketing materials to its main customer base, but is already receiving some purchase orders.